The present invention relates to a method for checking a support means and to equipment for checking a support means in an elevator installation.
Known support means are cables or belts. Belts consist of several tensile supports that are embedded in a common sheathing. The form of the belt is, as a rule, flat. This means the tensile supports are arranged adjacent to one another at a slight spacing and the sheathing surrounds this tensile support belt and fills out the intermediate spaces formed by the spacings of the tensile supports. The tensile supports are produced by known technology from steel material or steel-like materials mostly as strands and are usually electrically conductive.
Support means of the above-described form are also increasingly used in elevator construction. Thus, a corresponding belt is shown in the PCT published patent application WO 03/043926.
A special requirement results, in the case of use of support means of that kind, with the checking of the support means. The support means are exposed to various influences in use. They are subject to a continuous wear. They are exposed to an increased risk of breakage of individual wires at, in particular, deflection points of the support means, for example when the support means is guided over rollers, or the tensile supports can also be damaged due to extraordinary events, such as assembly influence, impacts and corrosion. These influences reduce the load-bearing cross-section and thus the tolerable load-bearing force of the support means and can in the extreme case lead to failure of the support means.
In currently usual installations traditional steel cables are used without sheathing. These steel cables can be checked visually or by means of a magnetic induction method, wherein readiness for discard is determined according to the DIN15020-2 standard.